Clancy Pendergast emerges as possible candidate to replace John Chavis

BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) - The talk that the LSU football team will head into 2015 without a prominent member of the coaching staff continued Wednesday.

A day after admitting John Chavis was "very productive for us," Les Miles is looking for a new defensive coordinator. Texas A&M's $4 million offer lured away the head of the Tiger defense for the last six years, who did not return home with the team on the plane ride from Nashville.

There are a couple of out-of-work coaches with NFL and SEC experience who have been waiting for an opening like the one at LSU.

One of those was coaching in the Super Bowl for the Arizona Cardinals when Tennessee was parting ways with Chavis. The former Cardinals defensive coordinator Clancy Pendergast most recently had a three-year contract at USC and once coached under Jackie Sherrill at Mississippi State.

Former LSU assistant Pete Jenkins said working under Pendergast, who was Ed Orgeron's defensive coordinator at USC after Lane Kiffin was fired, showed him his 16 years in the NFL makes him a very strong candidate. The ties to Sherrill also don't hurt his chances at getting the job.

"Coach Sherrill taught me a lot as a young coach about command," Pendergast said in 2009. "He had very good command of the team, so as a young coach, that's something I really looked up to - to carry yourself as a coach - and especially, as a coach with that type of power."

The other out-of-work coach waiting for a job like LSU is Orgeron. He is the former head coach of Ole Miss. He has passed on some other opportunities while living just down the road in Mandeville. In addition to doing a great job for USC on two diffrent occasions, the Louisiana native was also with Kiffin at Tennessee, had NFL experience down in New Olreans with the Saints and is considered a great recruiter.

Of course, losing Chavis to Texas A&M will make recruiting especially interesting with national signing day just five weeks away, because some of the same players he was trying to bring to Baton Rouge are also considering heading to College Station.